Races to Watch on Tuesday as Primary Season Kicks Off

When political neophyte J.D. Vance first entered the race in Ohio to succeed retiring Republican Senator Rob Portman, he seemed a longshot. Former state Treasurer Josh Mandel was the odds-on favorite in the Republican primary race, and other candidates were more familiar to Ohio voters, including state Senator Matt Dolan and former GOP state chairwoman Jane Timken. But the calculus of the race changed in mid-April, just weeks before this Tuesday's primary, when former President Donald Trump endorsed Vance.

The May 3 primaries in Ohio and in neighboring Indiana effectively kick off the 2022 election season. Only Texas has voted so far, back in March, while a dozen states go to the polls this month and Texans return for runoffs. The results Tuesday will provide the first real clues to a couple of endlessly debated political questions: how much influence does Trump actually wield within his party? What level of turnout will the two major parties be able to inspire in the first post-Trump midterms? Conventional wisdom has it that Republicans are salivating to get to the polls, with an eye toward drubbing the Democrats in the fall; Democrats, by contrast, are worried that their base is apathetic at best, and that turnout will be weak.

More than any other, the Ohio Senate race will be scrutinized endlessly for what it could portend. Trump won the state comfortably, twice. If Vance prevails, and then wins in November, Trump's inclination to run again in 2024 will be reinforced. His advisers say he hasn't made a decision yet, but a strong showing by candidates he has endorsed, in Ohio and across the country, would likely convince him to seek the presidency for a third time. However, if Vance and other Trump candidates lose, "then [Trump] may rethink," said one of his political advisers not authorized to speak on the record.

Trump's endorsement of Vance stunned and angered the other candidates in the field and Republicans around the country. Vance in 2016 had been a "never Trumper," and many believed the famously thin-skinned Trump wouldn't be able to forget that. With the exception of Dolan — who has criticized Trump for his ongoing claims that the 2020 election was stolen — all the Republican senatorial candidates in Ohio eagerly sought the former president's backing.

But when Vance won the coveted endorsement on April 15, the former president said: "Like some others, J.D. Vance may have said some not so great things about me in the past, but he gets it now, and I have seen that in spades. He is our best chance for victory in what could be a very tough race."

After the endorsement, Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel donated $3.5 million to a Super PAC backing Vance. That was on top of $10 million he donated last year, and the fresh money has enabled "Vance to control the message flow when it mattered most" — in the final weeks of the primary race, said Rex Elsass, a veteran GOP strategist based in Columbus.

Vance jumped in the polls, establishing narrow leads in all but one going into the last weekend of the campaign. The only other candidate with apparent momentum going into the election is Dolan, in second place and trailing by only four points, according to a May 1 poll from the Atlanta-based Trafalgar Group.

If Vance wins the Ohio primary, he will likely face off against 10-term U.S. Representative Tim Ryan, who is an increasingly rare breed in today's Democratic party: a relatively conservative, blue collar Democrat who tries to appeal to working class voters. Ryan, a senior campaign aide told Newsweek, will try to portray Vance, the former venture capitalist, as a faux populist. "We'll go right at him. We'll convince Ohio voters that he's a fraud. Everyone knows he didn't support Trump in 2016, and now pretends to be his best friend. Everyone knows he's Wall Street, not Main Street. He's a fraud, and we'll make that clear."

Democrats know they face an uphill battle in the fall. Most polls show Republicans leading a generic congressional ballot. Many have it relatively close; others, not so much. The Trafalgar Group released a survey on April 22 showing the GOP with a 13-point lead nationally in the race for Congress. Robert Cahaly, the senior strategist at Trafalgar, said the poll simply reflects the disappointment that not only Republicans and independents feel about the Biden administration and the current state of affairs, "but a lot of Democrats, too."

"[Democrats] aren't becoming Republicans," Cahaly told Newsweek, "but a lot of them seem ready to cast a vote in the fall expressing their frustration with how things are going now.'

The GOP senses the opportunity. In Indiana, they are likely to further strengthen their hold on the state legislature, and are also targeting a congressional seat in what is usually a Democratic stronghold. On May 3, seven Republicans will vie for the party's nomination in Indiana's First Congressional District, which comprises Gary and its surrounding suburbs. The incumbent is first-term U.S. Representative Frank Mrvan, a Democrat. And while he is still the favorite in his primary and the general, he is a relatively conservative Democrat and party members in the state are nervous. Both the Cook Political Report and University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato's 'Crystal Ball' have recently moved the race from "likely Democratic" to the more tenuous "lean Democratic."

In another Indiana race, Greg Pence, the older brother of former Vice President Mike Pence, is running for a third term in the state's Sixth Congressional District. Four days ago Trump endorsed Pence, who faces a minor primary challenge, despite the fact that Trump has been feuding with his former vice president since January 6, 2021. Pence refused to overturn the election that day as Congress was certifying the results, despite pressure from Trump to do so. The two men have been at odds ever since.

After this Tuesday's races, all eyes will look next to Pennsylvania, another battleground state that went for Trump in 2016 but then for President Joe Biden in 2020. In the Pennsylvania Senate race, Trump has endorsed TV personality Dr. Mehmet Oz over more established Republican candidates running in the primary. Oz's performance will also speak to just how much clout Trump has — or doesn't have — in a state critical to GOP hopes of regaining the presidency in two years.

Sabato notes that midterm elections are usually "base" elections; and that means whichever base is more revved up usually prevails. He expects, like most political analysts, that this is a GOP year. The question is, how big of a GOP year? An early indication, he said, can be gleaned from turnout on May 3.

"Republicans say this is a 'crawl over broken glass election,'" he said. If there is huge turnout in both Indiana and Ohio, even in races that aren't that competitive — for example, incumbent Ohio Governor Mike DeWine is expected to easily fend off a GOP primary challenge — "that will tell us something," Sabato said. "If this truly is to be a seismic red wave year — which I'm not necessarily convinced of yet — we may feel the first tremors on May 3."